Tag Archives: mass wedding

The Rev. Joe Sullivan, a Baptist minister, has been performing mass weddings on Valentine’s Day on the steps of the Bexar County Courthouse since 1989. After his remarks about same-sex couples this year, he may no longer be welcome, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

After receiving complaints from same-sex couples about the way Sullivan referred to them as repulsive and compared them to animals, County Judge Nelson Wolff called for the county to re-examine Sullivan’s participation in the annual event.

QSanAntonio reported on Valentines Day that Sullivan made disparaging remarks about the same-sex couples but had peculiar views about opposite-sex couples as well.

The LGBT site had this report from activist Julie Pousson who was at the San Antonio mass wedding:

“Minister Joe Sullivan said that our couples were there ‘solely to be repulsive,’ and he threatened them with acts of vengeance on the part of God if they did not leave the courthouse steps. Our beautiful couples stood their ground for more than five minutes of hate speech and contradictory logic from the good minister before he finally relented and performed the wedding. During his sermon, he told new wives to get up at 2 a.m. and bake lemon pies for their husbands, if that’s what they ask for. He told the men to buy their wives new cars if they ask for them . . . demonstrating that his bigotry is as wide as it is deep. This man does not represent our beautiful city. He does not represent any loving God.”

Dallas lesbian couple 1 of at least 5 couples participating in a marriage equality march and mass wedding Saturday in downtown Dallas

OLD FASHIONED WEDDING | Ashlyn Jones, left, and Amanda Evans will participate in a mass wedding in Founders Plaza in Downtown Dallas on Saturday, Oct. 15, as part of a demonstration for marriage equality.

Ashlyn Jones and Amanda Evans are getting married in downtown Dallas this weekend. They invited 50 of their friends, but would like everyone to attend.

“I want people I don’t even know to come and say, ‘Congratulations,’” Jones said. “That would be awesome.”

Jones and Evans are one of at least five couples that will participate in a mass wedding on Saturday evening at Founder’s Plaza in front of the Dallas County Records Building, as part of a protest in support of marriage equality.

Event organizer Daniel Cates said the couples are encouraged to apply for a marriage license inside the Records Building earlier in the week, even though those applications will be denied.

Similar events sponsored by GetEQUAL and P-FLAG are being held in about 10 cities across the state. In addition to the major cities, Harlingen, Brownsville, Huntsville and Odessa also have marriage equality events planned.

Cates said that while Texas is not close to granting marriage equality, LGBT Texans must demand the right.

“Since the New York marriage victory, people in other states are fighting back,” Cates said. “Once we lost the marriage battle here, we stopped fighting.”

Jones said that the Saturday wedding ceremony will also be a celebration of their five-year anniversary as a couple.

“In front of all of our friends, we’ll tell each other that we love each other,” Jones said.

The couple met in high school, and “When we met, it was electricity,” Jones said.

But the two kept their relationship a secret for three years. Their school had no gay-straight alliance, although they attended Teen Project in downtown Fort Worth until that group shut its doors.

When the couple told their parents they were lesbians, Jones said she and Evans were shunned by their families. Although relations have gotten better, none of their family members will be attending the wedding.
Jones said she expects marriage equality to come to Texas

eventually, “But I think it’s an uphill battle.”

Jones said she works for a very conservative company with very conservative customers, and “I had a customer walk out when she heard me talk about my wedding.”

After the downtown event, Jones said she and Evans and their friends will go to Chili’s to celebrate and then the couple will leave on their honeymoon. They’re going to Granbury to relax and get away from work, she said.

“We talked about following this up with a New York wedding,” Jones said. And then she’d like to come home and just be accepted.

“I would love to be able to hold my wife’s hand in a mall without a mother coming up to me and telling me it’s wrong to do that in front of her children,” she said.

Cates said that couples who would like to participate in the wedding ceremony should arrive at 4 p.m. for a short rehearsal. At 4:30 p.m. there will be an open mike for 30 minutes before a sidewalk march.

Cates said that a street permit was denied because the police are stretched thin with the State Fair of Texas and the Occupy Dallas protests. Sidewalk marches require fewer officers.

After the march, two people will speak before the mass wedding takes place. Richard Curtin, better known as Edna Jean Robinson, will officiate. He will conduct a “white knot” ceremony rather than have the couples exchange rings. The white knot, a symbol of marriage equality, represents tying the knot.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 14, 2011.

Lez Zeppelin

I just saw this story on DNAInfo.com about the all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band, Lez Zeppelin, who are celebrating the recent vote to legalize same-sex marriage in New York in a unique way: a mass wedding at a Lez Zeppelin concert.

As it turns out, Leesa Harrington-Squyres, the Lez Zeppelin drummer, is also an ordained minister, and she will officiate at the ceremony, which will be held just prior to the band’s big end-of-summer concert on Aug. 26 at Irving Plaza in New York City. The ceremony is open to the first 50 people who pay $65 and register at the Lez Get Married website. The wedding package includes the musical ceremony, two free tickets per couple to the concert, with VIP seating for up to six people per couple and photos with the band.

And by the way, the ceremony is open to straight couples as well as lesbian and gay couples.

On the Lez Get Married website, Lez Zeppelin leader and guitarist, said, “In light of the historic moment here in our very own New York, and as we are in the unique position of actually being able to marry people, we thought it would be a beautiful and magical way to say ‘thank you’ to our fans.”

I know there are some folks who wouldn’t want to share their wedding with 59 other couples at a concert. But if you ask me, a wedding PLUS a concert for $65 sounds like a great deal.

As the number of people living in jurisdictions with marriage equality doubles this weekend, here are some of the things going on around New York to celebrate — and protest that state’s new law:

Niagara Falls will be lit in rainbow colors on Sunday.

• To avoid delays and confusion, New York City will limit the number of marriages on Sunday to 764. Licenses will be distributed through lotteries for specific slots in each of the five NYC boroughs. The lottery opened on Tuesday and closed today at noon. Winners will be announced Friday. A lottery — what a great way to ensure the sanctity of marriage.

• Sunday will be a record day for marriages in New York City. The previous record was set on Valentine’s Day in 2003, when 621 opposite-sex couples wed.

• Rod and Ricky, the same-sex puppets who meet and fall in love in Avenue Q, plan to be among those in line for marriage licenses at City Hall.

• In Albany, Mayor Jerry Jennings will marry up to 10 couples at city hall right after midnight. A state Supreme Court judge will be at the Common Council chambers to waive the 24-hour waiting period.

• Mayor Bloomberg said he doesn’t expect people to be camping out in line waiting for marriage licenses. He says it’s not like buying an iPad 2. Right. Priorities. After all, which is more important?

Each year a mass wedding is held on the steps of the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio. But this year for the first time, the event included nearly two dozen same-sex couples, KENS-TV reports:

It was a first for the grassroots movement. They quietly filed in with almost 150 couples who had marriage licenses. All of them listened as Joe Sullivan, an ordained minister and Valentine’s Day officiator of many years, gave instruction as well as advice.

The ceremony had ended and the same-sex couples had exchanged rings, vows and kisses before Sullivan was made aware his crowd of newlyweds was different this time.

“They don’t have a license,” Sullivan said. “If they took vows, it really means nothing.”

But the same-sex couples said they walked away feeling just like they were married anyway.

The thought of gay and lesbian couples in the event did not seem to bother some of the participants.

“In this day and age — whatever it is — I know my religion and faith in God,” newlywed Mark Aguilar said.

The San Antonio action is one of dozens of demonstrations planned across the country calling for marriage equality on Valentine’s Day, according to GetEQUAL. We’ve posted a list of events in Texas after the jump. As far as we know, nothing is planned in North Texas, although a lesbian couple that had been turned away from a private wedding chapel because of their sexual orientation married in a public ceremony Friday at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. Publicist Kris Martin sent over the below photo of the couple, Tina Shaft and Tiffany Fenimore, posing for a NoH8 photo after the wedding, and the Dallas Observer has a nice write-up about the event. “They are a wonderful couple with a very supportive family,” Martin said in her e-mail. “I felt like mother of the brides.”